Jeffrey Taylor had long advocated removing his name from Mount Peten, his son said. Bureaucratically, this was no easy feat as the mountain straddles the border between Alberta and British Columbia. But last week, the BC government followed Alberta in officially canceling the controversial name – six years after Taylor’s father first launched his fight and two years after his death. “My dad was a big fan of the Rockies and loved hiking in Kananaski Country, where the peak is. And for someone who did what this guy did to be honored on the maps of our province and in an area that he cared about a lot, it really bothered him,” Taylor, a Calgary lawyer, told As It Happens guest Ginella Massa. “I think he’d be a little annoyed that it took so long, but I think he’d be relieved that it finally happened.”
Who was Henri Philippe Pétain?
The mountain was named in 1919 for Henri Philippe Pétain – better known as Philippe Pétain – a French field marshal who was hailed as a hero during the First World War for leading his troops to victory in the 1916 Battle of Verdun. But during World War II, Pétain led the Vichy French government in German-occupied France and worked closely with the Nazi administration. He even once wrote a letter to the Nazis congratulating them on the Dieppe Raid in 1942;in which 3,367 Allied soldiers, including 916 Canadians, were killed. Henri Philippe Pétain reprises his WWI role for the film Verdun – A Recollection. (File Hulton/Getty Images) “Someone who did things like that, you know, no amount of good, no amount of heroism in the First World War can make up for that,” Taylor said. After the war, the French government tried and convicted Pétain of treason for collaborating with the Nazis. He was sentenced to death, but because of his advanced age, he was allowed to live out the rest of his life in prison.
Hiking and history lessons
Taylor first learned about Pétain from his father. Geoffrey Taylor, a doctor, was an avid outdoorsman who often took his children hiking in and around Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, which is connected to the mountain in question. On their drives, the elder Taylor would ask his children about the names of different mountains and geographic features and teach them about the history behind those names. But Mount Petin always rubbed him the wrong way. “He often complained about it. And just one day [learned] there’s a form you get on the Government of Alberta website to rename a geographic feature,” Taylor said. “I found it, typed it up and basically shoved it in his hand and said, ‘You know, if you’re going to complain, complain to someone who can do something about it.’ Pétain, left, and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, right, shake hands as interpreter Colonel Schmidt looks on in October 1940. (Hulton File/Getty Images) That was in 2016. Three years later, in 2019, he got his first taste of victory when the Alberta government officially canceled the name. Savannah Johannsen, a spokeswoman for Alberta’s culture minister, said in an email to the CBC that the government “does not believe it is appropriate for a mountain in our province to be named in memory of a participant in the Holocaust.” But the mountain retained Pétain’s name on the BC side. So when his father died in 2020, Taylor took up the cause in his memory, harassing BC politicians about the issue. Then, last week on June 29, the BC government followed suit, removing the name from the mountain peak as well as the Pétain Glacier and Pétain Creek. “[I] I just found the right people to harass, I guess,” Taylor said. The decision comes after a two-year consultation process with local stakeholders, communities, First Nations and Indigenous groups, said Corinna Fillion, spokeswoman for BC’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. “This proposal to revoke these names received strong support from the community,” Filion wrote in an email. Duncan Taylor, left, is pictured as a young boy with his father, Jeffrey Taylor, and his sister while hiking in Alberta. (Submitted by Duncan Taylor) Neither province has yet chosen a new name for the mountain, and both governments say they will work with local stakeholders to find one. In the meantime, the mountain will simply be referenced by GPS coordinates. Taylor says the news means trips to the country park without his dad will now be a little less “bittersweet”. “There are many wonderful memories my family and I have of visiting this area. But now, you know, whenever we go, we can look at the map and we can look up at the horizon and know that, yes, the map changed because of his passion,” he said. Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview with Duncan Taylor produced by Aloysius Wong.
